Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Survivors of Typhoon Haiyan sought
to flee a city devastated by the storm in the southern
Philippines as emergency aid became bottlenecked and hungry and
exhausted locals resorted to looting.

“The magnitude of the devastation is overwhelming and our
communication lines are still down,” regional military
spokesman Lieutenant Senior Grade Jim Alagao said today in the
neighboring city of Cebu.

Two Philippine Air Force C-130 planes are making repeated
round trips from Cebu to the area that bore the brunt of Haiyan,
a super typhoon that the government said killed at least 2,275
people when it hit on Nov. 8. About 1,000 people were lined up
at the airport in the city of Tacloban yesterday in a bid to
leave and that number is rising, said military spokesman
Lieutenant Colonel Marciano Jesus Guevara.

“Two cargo planes is not enough, if we can have more we
can move things faster,” Guevara said in an interview in Cebu.

As aid agencies called for donations and countries sent
supplies and assistance teams, relief efforts were hampered by
roads washed away or blocked by debris, a lack of vehicles to
transport aid from Tacloban airport, and gridlock at Cebu
airstrips. The desperation among survivors in Tacloban led
President Benigno Aquino to declare a state of calamity on Nov.
11 and plead with locals to be patient.

Delivering Supplies

“We prioritize the delivery of food, clothing, shelter,”
Guevara said. On return trips to Cebu, the sick, injured and
elderly are given priority, with as many as 100 people able to
fit on each flight.

Nelly Cernal, a 46-year-old health worker, walked with one
of her four children for four hours to the Tacloban airport to
board one of the C-130 flights today to Cebu. “People are
leaving Tacloban because they fear for their lives,” Cernal
said, with looting worsening. “Everything was wiped out, dead
bodies of humans and animals scattered and near decomposition,”
she said.

After the typhoon the family survived on food scavenged
from the ruins of their house, Cernal said, and then were given
rice and noodles by neighbors who had looted stores. “We got
nothing from the government. We heard all the relief goods are
stuck in city hall.”

Dead bodies in Tacloban are starting to rot, according to
Ethilda Abiertas, a 51-year-old widow who was on the same flight
out of Tacloban. “I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “There were
bodies and debris everywhere.” Some people were carried off the
flight on stretchers to waiting ambulances and wheelchairs.

People Crushed

Eight people were crushed to death after thousands stormed
the National Food Authority rice warehouse in Leyte province,
where Tacloban is located, spokesman Rex Estoperez said by
phone.

In Tacloban, television images showed bodies on the streets
and floating in the sea, homes reduced to rubble, roads blocked
by felled trees and crops flattened. Announcing the latest death
toll today, Eduardo del Rosario, administrator of the Office of
Civil Defense, told a briefing that at least 80 people are
missing and 3,665 were injured.

“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Medecins Sans Frontiers,
whose emergency teams have been in Cebu since Nov. 9, said in a
statement on its website. “Transport links to the area have
been seriously disrupted, which has made access particularly
difficult.”

Cebu Airspace

Cebu airspace is congested, it said. “Our cargo planes
currently in the air will most likely have to divert to Manila
because it will not be possible to land in Cebu.”

The United Nations is seeking $301 million from donors,
David Carden, the UN humanitarian affairs representative in the
Philippines, said yesterday in Manila. About 6.9 million people
have been affected by the storm across 41 provinces, with nearly
150,000 houses damaged, the government said.

“This will come out to be one of largest logistics
operations ever done in history,” Cabinet Secretary Jose Rene
Almendras said at a briefing in Manila. “We need to coordinate
how we’re going to work with international community.”

The death toll would make Haiyan of the deadliest storms in
the country’s history. In late 2012 Typhoon Bopha killed 1,067
while Thelma killed 5,080 in late 1991.

Strongly Overwhelmed

“The logistical requirements are so big that the
government is strongly overwhelmed,” Earl Parreno, an analyst
at the Manila-based Institute for Political and Electoral
Reform, said by phone. “Few people in Eastern Visayas have the
capacity to evacuate,” Parreno said. “Most of them have no
choice but to stay in Leyte province, and joblessness will be a
problem with commerce at a standstill.”

The government has 18.7 billion pesos ($427 million) to
fund reconstruction, Aquino said Nov. 11. There is no plan to
sell bonds to fund rebuilding, Treasurer Rosalia de Leon said in
a mobile-phone message, and the Treasury has “enough
liquidity” for rebuilding.

The peso was steady against the U.S. dollar as of 2 p.m.
after yesterday weakening to its lowest level since the middle
of September. The benchmark equity index was also flat.

“It’s a risk to the growth momentum and will probably
raise prices,” BDO Unibank Inc. chief market strategist
Jonathan Ravelas said by phone of the typhoon’s damage. Still,
“even if prices rise, the central bank will still meet its
targets,” Ravelas said.

GDP Decline

Gross domestic product in areas hit by the typhoon may
decline as much as 10 percent next year, Finance Secretary Cesar
Purisima told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The regions
affected account for 12.5 percent of national output, he said.

Field hospitals with teams from countries such as Belgium,
Japan, Israel and Norway are on the ground, the World Health
Organization said in a statement. Malaysia will send a C-130
plane with food, water and tarpaulins to Tacloban while
Indonesia will send 75 tons of blankets and other items, the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations Secretariat said on its
Twitter account.

The U.S. carrier USS George Washington is en route to the
Philippines and the White House said in a statement that
President Barack Obama expressed his condolences in a call with
Aquino.

All airports affected by Haiyan are operational, with
Tacloban airport open for relief efforts and some commercial
operations, according to the government’s disaster-monitoring
agency. Power outages are still occurring in some areas.

The government must better protect communities at risk,
Senator Loren Legarda, chairman of the upper house committee on
climate change, said yesterday in a statement.

“We need to rebuild communities with the confidence that
we are not rebuilding the risks again,” Legarda said.